Jurors convicted Charles Saunders of murdering Alesia Dykes and Bernard Alexander Lyles after a daytime apartment shooting in front of children.

RIDGELAND, S.C. — A Jasper County jury convicted a New York man of killing two people at a Hardeeville apartment complex, then a judge sentenced him to two consecutive life prison terms plus five years after prosecutors said he opened fire during a family-linked dispute.

The verdict closed a case that blended long family ties, a violent argument, fleeing after the shooting and wrenching testimony about the children who were inside the apartment. Prosecutors said Charles Saunders, 50, killed Alesia Dykes, 40, and Bernard Alexander Lyles, 38, on June 18, 2024, after days of tension. The state told jurors the shootings were intentional, while the defense argued Saunders acted in self-defense. Jurors rejected that claim after a brief deliberation.

The case unfolded around a relationship network that reached back years to New York. Prosecutors said Dykes had known Saunders there and later introduced him to her sister. Saunders and that sister had a son together, and by 2024 the family connection had widened again after the son had a child of his own. Saunders had come to South Carolina and had been staying with Dykes for about three weeks before the killings. Dykes and Lyles, a couple living in Hardeeville, had also taken in Saunders’ adult son and grandson, giving the case an added sense of trust broken from inside a familiar circle.

Prosecutors said trouble had been building before the shooting day. Saunders and Lyles had argued in the days leading up to June 18, and the state said Saunders posted a video on social media showing himself with firearms and threatening to shoot someone. In court, prosecutors used that evidence to argue that the violence was not sudden or accidental. They said the final confrontation began outside the Walsh Drive Apartments shortly after noon as a verbal dispute that turned physical. When the situation escalated, Dykes and Lyles went back inside the apartment, but Saunders moved to the doorway, pulled a 9 mm handgun from his waistband and fired into the home.

Three young children were inside when the shots were fired, a detail that shaped the emotional tone of the trial from opening statements through sentencing. Dykes was dead when officers arrived. Lyles was taken to Coastal Carolina Hospital, where he later died. One child ran for help to a nearby relative at the neighboring Deer Run Apartments. Family testimony later brought that moment into the courtroom in especially painful terms. Shawonna Dykes, who is Alesia Dykes’ sister and also the mother of one of Saunders’ children, said a child told her Saunders had shot “momma and Boo Boo too,” using the name relatives used for Lyles.

Prosecutors also built the case through surveillance footage and forensic evidence gathered after Saunders left the scene. They said he fled before officers got there and was seen on cameras moving through Jasper County, taking off his shirt and throwing it away. Investigators recovered the shirt from a trash container and later found gunshot residue on it. The state said video then showed Saunders getting into a vehicle before he was arrested at a Waffle House in Ridgeland. Prosecutors argued that his actions after the shooting fit the behavior of a man trying to distance himself from the crime rather than someone who had lawfully defended himself and waited for police.

The defense pushed back by arguing self-defense and by challenging whether investigators could fully reconstruct the struggle. Defense lawyers questioned witnesses about the lack of certainty over the exact movements inside and around the apartment. They also stressed that no firearm was directly tied to Saunders in the way jurors often expect in a murder trial. Prosecutors answered with testimony that only one gun was fired during the encounter and that two other guns recovered at the scene had not been discharged. That evidence, the state argued, undercut the idea of a mutual armed fight and supported its claim that Saunders was the lone shooter.

After a three-day trial, jurors returned guilty verdicts on two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. The deliberations lasted a little more than an hour. At sentencing, prosecutors described the killings as a brutal repayment for trust and hospitality. Family members of both victims gave victim-impact statements that turned the courtroom toward the lives that had been cut short. Bernard Lyles’ mother said her son had been trying to change his life and had plans ahead of him. Alesia Dykes’ father told the court his daughter had helped raise Saunders’ son and asked for life imprisonment.

Saunders maintained that he had acted in self-defense, but Judge Carmen T. Mullen imposed two consecutive life terms and an additional five years on the weapon counts. The sentence means the punishment for the two killings will run back to back, not at the same time. With the verdict and sentence entered, the case now stands as one of the more stark Lowcountry murder trials in recent memory: a daytime shooting, children nearby, family ties at the center and a jury that quickly concluded the state had proved its case.

Author note: Last updated March 20, 2026.